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for the curious, here's a chiroptera video john took of my kite a while back. starting around half a minute in you can see the kite easily float for more than 30 seconds in a single glide. it's a really fantastic kite.

If you purchase or build a glider, you need to decide where you want to fly the glider to determine the appropriate size and sail loading.

As a point of reference, I find that for indoor and very light wind in my front yard (60 feet by 60 feet), wing spans no greater than 24 inches work the best for me. These glider kites should have the lowest sail loading. If you are going to fly in open fields or you want to cover ground, you can go big. For my town’s local sports field complex, I like gliders with wing spans ranging from 4 to 8 feet. The canards tend to have a slightly higher sail loading then the single sail gliders, but are a blast to fly.

To show you some size variety, I have designed and constructed gliders that range from 12 inches to 8 feet in wing span, with 48 to 1,414 square inches in sail area, with weights ranging from 1.0 to 101.5 grams, with sail loadings ranging from 0.087 to 0.401 ounces/square feet of sail area. For gliders up to 24 inches in wing span, I use Cuben for the sail material. Greater than 24 inches, I use PC31.

Several of this website’s sponsors carry gliders or building materials if you wish to purchase or make your own glider.

Gliders are like potato chips, you just can't have one, so jump into the pool with the rest of us have and some fun.

If you want to start off small, contact Thief. He has a variety of gliders to choose from. Once you get the feel of flying a glider, you then can decide what style glider best fits your flying pleasure. Flying a glider is extremely relaxing on the mind and a great distraction from everyday life.

Thief's video of the Chiroptera ("Bat") shows Stephen Burkey flying indoors. I'd call the Chiroptera a true indoor or windless kite- it does not like air movement around it. The air vents in this gym were enough to mess with the kite performance. I only fly mine when it's dead calm. The Emong doesn't mind a little bit of breeze but doesn't have near the glide of the Chiroptera if all things are equal. I'd also call the Zero G the poor mans Mega Plutz (Ceewan), the Plutz being lighter and floatier. The iFlite is also tough to beat for a kite that you can take and fly virtually anywhere. I love them all, though. A kite for every condition...

Thief's video of the Chiroptera ("Bat") shows Stephen Burkey flying indoors. I'd call the Chiroptera a true indoor or windless kite- it does not like air movement around it. The air vents in this gym were enough to mess with the kite performance. I only fly mine when it's dead calm. The Emong doesn't mind a little bit of breeze but doesn't have near the glide of the Chiroptera if all things are equal. I'd also call the Zero G the poor mans Mega Plutz (Ceewan), the Plutz being lighter and floatier. The iFlite is also tough to beat for a kite that you can take and fly virtually anywhere. I love them all, though. A kite for every condition...

i agree that the Chiro does not list sideway gusts indoors....but a great feature of this one is that if you are outside and the wind picks up a bit the wings bend back and form a deep keel that keeps the chiro flying stable!The emong i found to dive too much to my liking....i also suggest a Skate.....glides very well...and can fly outside with a bit of fun too.....

It depends on the type of gliding you want to. Gliders with very low dihedral (bend between each side of the wing) and low weight at the wing tips will be very responsive to slight changes in air currents, which is a very good thing. This also allows them to be responsive to light changes in pressure on the flying line. Will's glider, Horvath's gliders, the light small gliders that Thief has, and my gliders use low dihedrals. I like the dihedral to be between 16 and 20 percent in total between each side of the wing. Too little dihedral and the glider may not bank in a turn and may stall more abruptly at the tips. My Hawks (12, 16, 20 and 24 in. wing spans), my Falcon (64.5 in. wing span) and my Eagle (96 in. wing span) will circle in very light lift like a bird. The circle will be proportional to the wing span of the glider. Canards tend to be more stable, even if the main sail (large rear sail) has a low dihedral. With Will’s kite, you can add more dihedral by shortening the line from the center spine to the spreader. Just open up the loop and add more wraps around the spreader. Try one additional loop at a time and see if you like the performance.

Gliders with greater dihedral (greater angle between each side of the wing) will be very stable, but not easy to turn with light pressure on the flying line. Also, gliders that are more rugged with more weight near the tips also will be reluctant to turn. When this type of glider encounters changes in air currents, it responds by rocking the wings, and then continues in the same direction in a normal glide.

So, if you want to fly in a straight line, look for a glider with more dihedral. If you want to have it responsive to your line commands and slight changes in the air currents, then look for a glider with less dihedral. Another way to put this is if you are flying in turbulent air, add more dihedral to provide more stability. If you are flying is smooth air, reduce the dihedral so that the glider is more reactive to your line commands.

Also, sail loading has a lot to do with glider performance. If you want a response glider and longer glides, the lighter the sail loading the better. Gliders with higher sail loadings will fly faster, stall at higher flying speeds, and tend to tip stall. The stalls will be more abrupt and will require more altitude to recover. For the same glider at different total weights, the glide slope will be the same, except the heaver version will glide faster down the slope. For example, the proof of concept version of my Bird of Prey glider kite with a wing span of 24 inches was made from PC31 and 0.04 carbon rods and weighs 5.7 grams, which equates to a sail loading of 0.223 oz./sq.ft. The light version of my Bird of Prey glider kite with the same wing span was made from Cuben Fabric with 0.03 carbon rods and weighs only 3.0 grams, which equates to a sail loading of 0.117 oz./sq.ft. That’s a 47 percent reduction in sail loading for the same size sail. The lighter version of my Bird of Prey is a very agile floater, while the heaver version is a hunter. Also, the sail loading needs to be lighter for the smaller gliders (less than 24 inch wing span) as compared to the larger gliders (48 to greater than 96 in. wing spans). This is due to the contact time of each air molecule across the average chord of sail (leading edge to trailing edge), which measurement is call the Reynolds Number. So you can get away with a higher sail loading with a larger glider wing span, but need to be as light as possible for the smaller glider kites.

As previously posted, you need to determine what type of flying you want to do then select the type of glider that fits your needs. If you already have a light glider, you can adjust the center of gravity and dihedral to dial in the type of flying you want to do. Don’t be afraid to tinker with these parameters.

Once again thanks everyone I really enjoyed all of the comments and the video's. Doug half of the words you posted confused me so I am thankful for you explaining them. I am sure I will be coming back to this thread to read your post, to much to try and learn all at once but am great full for your knowledge and sharing it with me and others that read this.

I see that Thief sent you a link. Let me explain these two aerodynamic parameters and introduce a new one to assist in the explanation.

Dihedral: Take an assembled convention diamond shaped single line kite and place it on a table with the front side facing down. The front being the side that would face you with the line connected in flight. Now look at the kite from the end of the table, looking from the nose to the tail. You will see that the tips of the kite sail are off the table on each side. Also, you will see that the sail is shaped like a “V”, with the high points of the “V” at each tip, and the bottom of the “V” in the middle touching the table. The angle between the two vertical sections of the “V” is the dihedral.

Sail Loading: To understand sail loading, you need to understand projected sail area. Using the example above, view the kite from the back side of the kite, looking down at the table. If you traced the outline of the sail onto the table, the outline would be the project sail area. The project sail area is the area of the sail that provides lift. It is not the sail area of the kite when the kite is unassembled and lying flat on the table. Sail loading is the total weight of the kite divided by the projected sail area. The units can be what make sense for the size and weight of the kite. The weight can be in grams or ounces. The area can be in square inches or square feet. If you want to compare different kites, you need to use the same units of measure.

Using the above example, now view the kite from the side, looking across the table from tip to tip. That vertical area is the sail area that provides stability, not lift, due to the dihedral.

As an example, my Bird of Prey glider kite wing span when assembled is 24 inches. When not assembled and lying flat on a table, the distance between each wing tip increases to 24.4375 inches. The area of the sail lying flat on the table is 132 square inches. When assembled, the project sail area that creates the lift is 130 square inches or 98.5 percent of the total sail area. The difference is due to the dihedral angle of 20 degrees between the two sides of the sail. The side area of the sail that can be viewed from the tips when assembled is 2 square inches, which area provides stability. So with a total weight of 3 grams and a projected sail area of 130 square inches, the sail loading can be calculated to be 0.0231 grams/square inch of project sail area or in the previously posted units, 0.117 ounces/square feet of projected sail area.

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